“The scarcity of women applying for technical positions (and getting hired), two month averages to fill positions, and the enduring value of personal referrals.”

These are some of the takeaways from Israeli Startup Recruiting 2015, our newest research report, which details the talent acquisition realities for Israeli startups as they try to emulate the earlier successes of CheckPoint, Waze, Chromatis Networks and Wix.

Comeet published it today after analyzing more than 100,000 applications processed through our collaborative recruiting system. Although the vast majority of positions are roles located in Israel, probably 10-14% are positions in the UK, Europe and North America. Not unlike many other regions with thriving tech sectors, the demand curve clearly favors those with in-demand talents and skillsets.

Competition in Startup Nation

Demand is a huge issue because Israel has more startups per capita than any other country in the world. In a country of 8 million, there are an estimated 3-4,000, creating a lot of talent acquisition competition in Startup Nation. One of our recommendations is the need for startups to apply the same kind of rigor to recruiting as they do to sales and marketing. There’s an imperative to create market visibility and awareness and build referral networks.

I invite you to download a copy of the report here.

Quick Sampling of Findings

Gender Gap or Imbalance Persists

The STEM gender divide is clearly evident. Women were hired for 60% of the positions categorized as administrative and 18% of technical positions. We didn’t attempt to explain the causes of the Gender Gap, which is certainly not unique to Israel. It’s a characteristic of recruiting in most tech centers. In case you were wondering about definitions, examples of administrative roles are management, HR, and finance, while technical job titles included developers, Q&A, system architects and data analysts.

Sourcing: Referred Candidates 4X More Likely to be Hired

Despite the buzz around Social Recruiting (primarily LinkedIn and Facebook), job boards (40%), agencies (31%), and referrals (9%) were the best candidate sources. Personal referrals are the most productive source; with 9% of total applicants but 35% of hires.

Sourcing: Top Israeli Job Boards and Agencies

If you’re looking to hire in Israel, fish where the fish are. Here are the top agencies and job boards ranked by the number of relevant applicants. Relevant means the candidate passed the initial CV screen:

Agencies Job Boards

1. SeeV 1. JobMaster

2. CPS 2. Drushim

3. Nisha 3. AllJobs

4. Ethosia

5. GotFriends

Interviewing Takes a Long Time

Companies conducted an average of 24 interviews for every technical position. That’s a lot of time invested by hiring teams. We estimated that teams invested an average of 78 hours per position on activities ranging from screening resumes and coordinating interviews, to interview prep and follow-up. Using a very low estimate of $33.00 per hour, the aggregate value of this time exceeds $2,500 per position. This is just one reason why the cost of poor hiring decisions is so high.

Time-to-fill Positions

Average time-to-hire for companies is 61 days, while the average apply-to-hire for candidates is 30 days. Both averages increase for technical jobs and decrease for administrative positions.

There’s a lot more in our Israeli Startup Recruiting 2015 report. Come over for a visit to our website and grab your own copy.